The Purchase Price; Or, The Cause of CompromiseHough, Emerson
History
The Purchase Price; Or, The Cause of Compromise
Hough, Emerson
United States -- History -- 1815-1861 -- Fiction
She stood near the window, at some distance removed from him, even
as she passed stopping to tidy Up a disarranged article on the
tables here or there. He smiled again at this. "Where is Sally?"
he asked. "And how about your maid?"
"Some one must do these things," she answered. "Your servants need
watching. Sally is never where I can find her. Jeanne I can
always find--but it is with her young man, Hector!"
He shook his head impatiently. "It all comes on you--work like
this. What could I have done without you? But yourself, how are
you coming on? That arm of yours has pained me--"
"It ceased to trouble me some time since. The doctor says, too,
that you'll be quite well, soon. That's fine."
He nodded. "It's wonderful, isn't it?" said he. "You did it.
Without you I'd be out there." He nodded toward the window, beyond
which the grass-grown stones of the little family graveyard might
be seen. "You're wonderful."
He wheeled painfully toward her presently, "Listen. We two are
alone here, in spite of ourselves. Face to face again, in spite of
all, and well enough, now, both of us, to go back to our firing
lines before long. We have come closer together than many men and
women get to be in a good many years; but we're enemies, and apart,
now. At least you have seen me pretty much as I am--a savage--not
much more. I've seen you for what you are--one woman out of
hundreds, of thousands. There isn't going to be any woman in my
life, after you.--Would you mind handing me that paper, please?"
He passed the document to her opened. "Here's what I meant to do
if I didn't come through. It wasn't much. But I am to pay; and if
I had died, that was all I could pay. That's my last will and
testament, my dear girl. I have left you all I have. It is a
legal will. There'll never be any codicil."
She looked at him straight. "It is not valid," she said. "Surely
you are not of sound mind!"
He looked about him at the room, for the first time in his memory
immaculately neat. From a distance there came the sound of a
contented servant's voice. An air of rest and peace seemed in some
way to be all about him. He sighed. "I never will be of sound
mind again, I fear.
"Make this paper valid!" he suddenly demanded. "Give me my sound
mind too. You've given me back my body sound."
Her lips parted in a smile sufficient to show the row of her white
and even teeth, "You are getting well. It is time for me to go.
As to this--" She handed him back the paper folded.
"You think it's only an attempt to heal the soreness of my
conscience, don't you?" he said after a time, shaking his head.
"It was; but it was more. Well, you can't put your image out of my
heart, anyhow. I've got that. So you're going to leave me now?
Soon? Let it be soon. I suppose it has to come."
"My own affairs require me. There is no possible tenure on which I
could stay here much longer. Not even Jeanne--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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